Cuban Doctors Proud of Services Provided in Brazil
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Photo: Sergio Alejandro Gómez / CubadebateCuban doctors who arrived in Havana on Friday after the end of the medical mission of Cuba in Brazil expressed their pride for the services rendered in that South American country.
In the reception at the Jose Marti International Airport, Dr. Maria Suarez said on behalf of her classmates that Cuban doctors can feel satisfied with the work they have done and the attention to millions of people, mostly the humble, dispossessed and forgotten.
Suarez, originally from the eastern Cuban province of Holguin, said that many of her patients had never had doctors until the arrival of the Cubans.
We were very well received, 'she said; I keep innumerable memories and experiences, but in a special way I remember the children and the elderly who put their health and trust in our hands.
'They said that only Cuban doctors looked at them in the eyes,' added the doctor, who said she had purchased from her pocket on more than one occasion the medicine that mothers without the most basic resources needed for their children.
The President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, at the welcoming ceremony commented that many Brazilians saw the birth of hope with the Cuban doctors.
"You went to remote places where no one wanted to go", the president recalled to the more than 200 newcomers.
There remains the lament of the vulnerable population, of the patients who will be unattended, but you complied, reflected Diaz-Canel, who added that Cuba will not abandon the people of Brazil or any other in the world, given the humanist vocation of the island.
According to the head of state, Cuban doctors were able to cure the sick, but also to animate the soul of millions of Brazilians and demonstrate that a better world is possible.
On the other hand, the head of the Ministry of Public Health, Jose Angel Portal, pointed out that the Cuban doctors gained the affection of their patients due to their professionalism.
According to the minister, Cuban internationalist doctors have faced the most diverse adversities, from inhospitable geographies to natural disasters, through epidemics and complex political situations.
However, he said, they had never been so humiliated and assaulted before as they were with the declarations and conditions of the elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, which is why Cuba decided to end its participation in the Brazilian More Doctors program.
Bolsonaro's offenses threaten to leave millions of people without health services, he said.
Cuba receives them as the heroes they are; We are proud of each of you, as well as the other doctors who provide services in more than 60 countries, he said.
In statements to the press, Yari Niurka Montero said that it was very sad to leave and to verify the certainty of their patients that they would not have a doctor again.
Everyone regretted our departure, said the doctor, who treated about 5,000 people in the state of Minas Gerais.
Similarly, Aliuska Rodriguez said that never in two years in Brazil received a complaint from it patients involving the Cuban doctors.
She added that before leaving for the mission they all signed a contract and agreed to the terms of their presence in Brazil. Neither I nor any of my patients considered me a slave, she said, alluding to Bolsonaro's statements regarding the work of the Cubans.
In the five years of the More Doctors program, an initiative created in August 2013 by the then president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, nearly 20,000 Cuban employees served 113 million people in more than 3,600 municipalities. / PL
